The vast proliferation of facilities destined for generating electrical energy by transformation of so-called renewable energies. The considerable increase in costs associated with the production of fossil fuels, together with the exhaustion of this type of reserve and the drawbacks associated with their use, including the special consideration that must be given to the global warming effect, has led to an ever-increasing dedication of resources to the installation of equipment for leveraging energies from naturally occurring sources, mainly solar energy, solar thermal energy and wind energy. Therefore, in the specific case of solar energy, it is becoming increasingly frequent to find a number of growing extensions of land surfaces occupied by solar modules, composed of a series of panels destined for transforming the solar radiation incident thereupon into electrical energy susceptible of being both leveraged in situ and conditioned and adapted for injection into the power grid and consumption in distant geographical locations.
In relation to a photovoltaic facility, each of the solar modules consists of a number of panels permanently mounted onto a structure that maintains and supports them. These modules, normally ordered in rows and columns in such a manner as to keep a minimum predetermined distance between adjacent modules, may be static, in such a manner that they are oriented in a more favourable manner so as to receive the greatest possible amount of radiation during the sunlight hours of the area where they are installed, for which purpose they have a fixed inclination angle which logically varies in accordance with the coordinates of the area where they are installed, or may have certain mobility which allows the progressive orientation thereof automatically in accordance with the movement of the sun throughout the day, always seeking to maintain the maximum possible perpendicularity to the sun's rays in order to ensure that solar energy is leveraged to a maximum. However, in all cases there are external phenomena that can negatively affect photovoltaic module efficiency, such as a layer of dirt on the surface thereof derived from environmental dust or rain, the accumulation of which creates opacity and hampers and reduces the passage of solar radiation towards the photovoltaic cells of each panel, with the ensuing decrease in the amount of energy produced and loss of efficiency of the installation. Therefore, adequate cleaning of the module surfaces to remove said dirt and maintain these in the best possible operating conditions becomes necessary.
Taking into account the needs of the current art, briefly outlined above, the main objective of the present invention is the development of a device that will enable the aforementioned cleaning operations to be carried out on the surfaces of the photovoltaic modules of a power generating facility, automatically and in a manner susceptible of being applied to the different types of existing facilities (i.e. plants with stationary modules or plants with tracking modules), aimed at guaranteeing better exploitation of the solar radiation incident thereupon and consequently maintaining overall efficiency at more appropriate values. This objective has been fully achieved using the device described hereunder, the main characteristics of which have been included in the characterising portion of claim 1 attached hereto.
In essence, the device has been materialised in the form of an articulated arm, adapted for mounting on a tractor vehicle, for example a tractor vehicle, for movement throughout the generation plant between the adjacent modules of each line or row. The device is joined to the tractor vehicle by means of a support structure that holds up an articulated parallelogram structure which articulately includes a part for closing said parallelogram on its opposing element, from one end of which an arm projects bearing a projection bar of variable length, depending on the surface to be cleaned, on its free end equipped with a multiplicity of nozzles separated at a variable distance, according to overlap percentage, water consumption, cleaning fluid pressure and the distance between the surface to be cleaned and the nozzle and, naturally, the characteristics of the nozzle itself. The cleaning liquid is projected from said nozzles in the form of a spray (water or a mixture of water and other cleaning and maintenance components), the liquid of which is impelled from a container tank incorporated in the tractor vehicle with the help of a pump. The arm is of the telescopic type, actuated by means of a hydraulic cylinder, while the joint between the projection bar and the arm of the device is, likewise, an articulated joint, in such a manner that the bar can be positioned in accordance with the needs of each particular case, adopting multiple relative positions in relation to its supporting arm. The device includes other hydraulic cylinders which are in charge of moving the parallelogram in accordance with the correct positioning that must be adopted by the arm. Finally, the projection bar includes position sensors, preferably mechanical or electromechanical sensors which prevent the physical contact between said bar and the surface of the panels of each module during the cleaning operations.